Just How Vulnerable Is Iran to Sanctions?

Last February, Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei announced a set of broad economic policies to harden his country against future sanctions. Now that Iran has inked a deal to limit its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief, the country is gearing up for a major economic windfall. But make no mistake, Tehran’s re-connection to the global economy does not provide an inoculation against the imposition of current or future sanctions. Although the timing of sanctions relief and the mechanism to re-impose—or snap back—sanctions has been a point of contention throughout negotiations, fears that Iran's return to economic normalcy will undercut the ability to re-impose sanctions after the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) is short-sighted logic, and fails to consider the evolution and innovativeness of U.S. sanctions as a foreign policy tool while over-emphasizing emerging alternatives to the global financial system that may never come to fruition.

There is no mistaking the impact international sanctions have had on Iran's economy....

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